Ostensibly, having a flat organization is a good idea. You know, everyone should be equal and have the same rights, blablabla. But not having a formally defined power structure would only lead to the tyranny of structurelessness, where informal power structures form spontaneously from preexisting social relations between members, producing leaders ... See more

This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an “objective” news story, “value-free” social science, or a “free” economy.

As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not ... See more